The MacBride Report in Twenty-first-century Capitalism, the Age of Social Media and the BRICS Countries

The MacBride Report was published in 1980. The report communicated the need for a New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO). With the breakdown of what used to be called “actually existing socialism“ in the East and with the rise of the neoliberal commodification of everything, a NWICO indeed emerged, but one that looked quite different from that the MacBride commission imagined. Thirty-five years later, it is time to ask how the situation of the media and communications in society has changed. This contribution asks the question of what we can make of the MacBride Report today in a media world and society that has seen the rise of an economically driven form of globalisation that also has impacts on the media, the expansion of the information economy with a new young precariat at its core, and the emergence of the World Wide Web and its change into a highly commercialised system, including the emergence of so-called “social media“ whose capital accumulation model is based on targeted advertising

Reinventing ‘Many Voices’: MacBride and a Digital New World Information and Communication Order

The MacBride Commission Report was arguably one of the most significant multilateral interventions in the history of international communication. This article charts its emergence at the time of deeply contested Cold War politics, coinciding with the rise of the southern voices in the global arena, led by the non-aligned nations. Thirty-five years after the report's publication, has the global media evolved into a more democratic system, demonstrating greater diversity of views and viewpoints? Despite the still formidable power of US-led western media, the article suggests that the globalisation and digitisation of communication has contributed to a multi-layered and more complex global media scene, demonstrating the “rise of the rest”

Od MacBrida to Murdocha: marketizacija globalnega komuniciranja

The report of the MacBride Commission is credited to have brought information-and communication-related issues onto the global agenda and therefore occupies a prominent place in the history of international communication. After revisiting the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) debates closely associated with the MacBride Report, this article contends that, despite many advances in democratization of the media, some of the key criticisms in the report are as valid in 2005 as they were in 1980, when it was published. Focusing on the global South, the article argues that the globalisation, privatisation and marketisation of the media, exemplified by what it terms as "Murdochisation," has undermined public discourse in a global media culture predicated on entertainment and infotainment.Poročilu MacBridove komisije gre zahvala, da je prinesel vprašanja o informacijskih in komunikacijskih zadevah na globalno agendo in zato zavzema vidno mesto v zgodovini (proučevanja) mednarodnega komuniciranja. Po pregledu razprav o novi svetovni informacijski in komunikacijski ureditvi, povezanih s poročilom MacBridove komisije, članek ugotavlja, da so kljub napredku v demokratizaciji medijev nekatere ključne kritike v poročilu še danes veljavne tako kot leta 1980, ko je bilo poročilo objavljeno. V usmeritvi na globalni Jug članek dokazuje, da so globalizacija, privatizacija in marketizacija, ki jih ponazarja "murdochizacija", oslabili javni diskurz v globalni medijski kulturi, ki temelji na razvedrilu

Review: A riveting media chronicle of giving voice to the voiceless

Review of: Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face: Media, Mayhem and Human Rights in the Pacific, by David Robie. Foreword by Kalafi Moala. Auckland: Little Island Press in association with the Pacific Media Centre. 2014, 362 pp. ISBN 978-1877484-25-4Most journalists work to earn a decent living. Some join the profession to rub shoulders with the rich and famous, benefitting from close proximity to the powers that be. David Robie, the doyen of journalism in the South Pacific region, has pursued a different type of journalism, as this book attests. An exceptional individual, apart from being an award-winning journalist, a prolific author and a committed journalism educator, Robie has set new standards of journalism practice and politics in a part of the globe which receives scant coverage in the international media. During the early 1990s, as associate editor of the London-based and now defunct Gemini News Service, a ‘Third World-oriented’ news features service, this reviewer had the privilege to work with Robie, who regularly contributed thoughtful, well-researched but never preachy articles and commentaries from the South Pacific region, which were circulated among the agency’s more than 100 newspapers around the world